Conventional document scanning services offer an option to manually repair damaged documents. Heritage preservation efforts also seek to preserve and repair the world's cultural documents. Approaches to such repairs are either performed by hand on an original document or are performed digitally to correct problems such as contone image degradation or to perform document clean-up. Conventional approaches do not provide a digital repair method for halftoned images.
Document scanning and digitization is a large business, but conventional techniques do not provide a restoration service for halftoned documents. For example, when documents have staples, wrinkles, or tears, preparation for scanning is done manually by specialists. A team of specialists can remove staples, paper clips, binder clips, post-it notes, and manually perform triage or repair of torn documents for scanning. Depending on the extent of wrinkles or tears, the scanning specialist will choose to use an automated feeder or will place the documents directly on the glass for scanning.
Other document repair approaches can correct, retouch, repair, and restore old, torn, scratched, damaged, faded and/or washed out documents. Once corrected, retouched, repaired, and restored, such approaches can provide custom prints of the document (or documents) and archive the images on CD/ROM. However, these approaches are not practicable to damaged halftoned documents.
Other conventional approaches are designed to enable students, conservators, documentation specialists, museum curators, heritage managers and members of the general public to plug in anywhere and study and work together in the cultural heritage sector, which is striving to preserve the common heritage of mankind.
There is a need in the art for systems and methods that facilitate restoration and editing of scanned and/or digitized halftoned images and/or documents while overcoming the aforementioned deficiencies.